


On the Road Again

by ishafel



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-08
Updated: 2011-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-15 12:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Methos has said goodbye in every language ever spoken. One more time won't kill him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Road Again

You never can get blood out of upholstery, and it's the kind of thing people always notice. Methos leaves the Explorer somewhere in southern California, leaves Adam Pierson behind for good the way he leaves the scratched cds on the passenger seat, the crumpled maps in the glove compartment, the duffel bag full of jeans and paperback books. Now that Joe is dead there's nothing to hold him, nothing to keep him on the west coast or in the twenty-first century. The Quickening he takes on his way to LAX is just a bonus, just something to keep him from turning back.

He's aware that the flight attendants think he's coming off an epic bender of some kind, and that it's justified: he's shivering despite the heat, dressed in expensive clothes he bought at the designer stores in the airport, wearing his sunglasses indoors to cover the dark circles under his eyes. He hasn't slept since Joe died, and he still has someone else's blood under his fingernails. All he can think about is getting out of the country, getting away; all he can think is that the older he gets the harder it is to leave.

Things ought to be better in this promised land, this long awaited time: everything should be easier. They have obliterated polio and smallpox and scurvy but they cannot cure cancer. They can build weapons that kill from across the world but they cannot keep the people Methos loves from dying. He knows that this last hundred years, this age, has been no crueler to him than any other, but knowing that a wound will heal without a scar does not make it any easier to bear.

He's sober by the time the plane touches down outside Buenos Aires. He's sober and he's someone else. The Quickening he took has settled and he's got a new set of identification, a name and occupation Joe will never know. In a century or so he'll swing back up through Seacouver, and he'll be able to smile, thinking of it. He won't always feel like he's lost his best friend. He knows this, because it's happened before. But it never gets any easier to bear.


End file.
